The seven-person crew returned to Earth on Tuesday after being the first to take a space shuttle into orbit since the Columbia disaster of 2003.

“In the last two and a half years, we have been through the very worst that manned space flight can bring us, and over the past two weeks we have seen the very best,” NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told the astronauts and their families, colleagues and fans Wednesday.

The crowd waved American flags for the U.S. astronauts and Japanese flags for crew member Soichi Noguchi, one of the spacewalkers.

“As a rookie astronaut, I could not ask for more,” Noguchi said. “We had three spacewalks, two bonus extension days in space and one great crew.”

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas joined the astronauts and told them the nation’s space program needs more cheerleaders.

“Because of the courage of Discovery’s crew, and the commitment of everyone at NASA and the entire space community, our generation has an opportunity to go farther into space and further into the void, to do the impossible and answer the unsolvable,” DeLay said. “For that chance, we all owe the crew more than our thanks.”

While the homecoming has been filled with excitement for what mission controllers declared a “truly spectacular test flight,” uncertainty remains for the future of the shuttle program.

Shortly after Discovery blasted off July 26, a nearly 1-pound chunk of foam insulation fell from the fuel tank — the very thing that was supposed to have been fixed after dooming Columbia. The foam missed Discovery, but NASA grounded all shuttle flights until engineers fix the problem.

NASA ground crews inspected Discovery after its return from orbit and found it in good condition, an official said Wednesday at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

“It’s as clean a vehicle as I’ve seen after landing,” said Dean Schaaf, landing support convoy commander.

Technicians counted 101 dings and divots, including 20 that were larger than one inch. Schaaf said the numbers were similar to the results of other shuttle post-landing inspections.

A preliminary inspection of the shuttle’s thermal blanket under the commander’s cockpit window showed that it remained intact during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. The protective blanket was a bit frayed and protruded outward but showed no scorch marks, Schaaf said.

NASA initially worried that the torn thermal blanket could come loose during re-entry and strike the shuttle. But the space agency decided against a fourth spacewalk to repair it after engineers concluded the chance of that happening was remote.

As the astronauts celebrated Wednesday, technicians at Edwards were busy preparing Discovery for its return to Florida. The cross-country trip atop a modified Boeing 747 takes a week of preparations and is expected to cost NASA about $1 million.

The 12 orbiting astronauts on the International Space Station were hailed by the chief on Thursday — and also got a humorous scolding for keeping their android crewmate locked up in its packing for so long.